This invention relates to automatic teller machines (ATMs).
Now that ATMs enjoy wide acceptance by customers of banks it is desirable to provide facilities for the automatic deposit of the kind of items of bank business, such as banknotes and cheques, which are accepted by bank tellers. Such automatic deposit facilities are known. The known facilities are one of two kinds. In one kind of facility the customer puts all the items he wishes to deposit into a special envelope and inserts the envelope into a designated slot in an ATM. A receipt is given, basically just for the envelope. The contents of the envelope are later processed manually in the traditional way. In the other kind of facility individual items are deposited and are then examined with the aid of an imaging device. A detailed receipt is then issued to the waiting customer. However the detailed examination of each item takes time and during that time the ATM is unavailable for use by any other customer. This reduces the number of customers that an ATM can handle in a given time and so its usefulness.